Re: $> git branch splat response considered harmful

Emily Shaffer [off-list ref] writes:

More generally, I think you should take a look at `git help git` and
check out the difference between "porcelain" and "plumbing" commands.
The former, of which `git branch` is one, are intended for interactive
use and not really meant for scripting or piping. You can usually come
up with an equivalent from the plumbing commands, which Bryan has
suggested for you with `git for-each-ref`.  Git project tries very
hard to maintain output format of the plumbing commands so as to not
break folks' scripts, but such promises aren't usually made for
porcelain commands.

Thanks for a detailed response.

Git project promises that output format of the Porcelain commands is
subject to change, in order to support human eyeballs better.

Unless documented otherwise (e.g. "git status --porcelain"), it is
unwise to try parsing porcelain output---your script may break any
time and you get to keep both halves.

That is not the same as saying "do not script using Porcelain".
Sending the output directly to the end user (e.g. compute the
revision range in your script that finally calls "git log" using
that computed revision range) is perfectly fine.

Thanks.